


The Turning

by aquandrian



Category: Real Person Fiction
Genre: F/M, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-26
Updated: 2008-02-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:44:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/aquandrian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I don’t want the sun to shine, I wanna make love.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Turning

Twilight is the time of mending.

All the harsh bright shapes of the hot day soften and run together, lose their edges and dissolve. Colours smells textures sigh and slump. The city breathes out with the dampening down of the sun.

In the hush is where life recreates itself. It gleams a new shade, sharpens a different scent, and draws breath for that first note.

Twilight is a time of the turning.

_________________

 

“You’re late.”

It’s much later than they usually meet, up here on the rooftop with the city night sky yawning glitter over grime and concrete. The neon’s been flickering for a good many hours and a chill dew stands along the parapet. Still the boy doesn’t move, doesn’t look around at the hint of footfall.

“Happy birthday.”

He grunts, accepts the present but puts it to one side. The man wipes off the parapet, sits and swings long legs over, feet dangling in mid air. Neither say anything for a while, watching the deep ghost clouds change shape and divide themselves around the tall bright buildings.

“It’s been my birthday for about nearly four hours now,” says the boy eventually. It’s a conversational tone, same as the man’s reply. “It’s been your birthday for eighteen years now.”

“Yeah. You know I was thinking?”

“Mm?”

“What have I got, really? For eighteen years, what have I got to show?”

The man opens his mouth to reply and shuts it.

“Just started this degree. And, you know, university. That’s great. College, woo hoo. On the path of achievement and all that. It’s like the rest of my life starts now, everyone keeps telling me that. So what have the past eighteen years meant?”

The man says nothing, watches as a light comes on in one of the apartments across the street. He listens.

“I was talking to this girl yesterday. Just, you know, chatting. And she tells me she’s got to go to this funeral tomorrow. She’s not sure how she’s going to cope cos she’s never been to a funeral before. And I say, you know, they’re not really that bad, you go, you pretend to pray, you try not to let the crying get to you, and then you have some tea and a sandwich and it’s all done. And you know what she does? She looks at me and she says, how many funerals have you been to?”

_________________

 

She’s on the prowl.

Too long cooped up, she could crawl out of her skin. She wants touch, she wants heat, she wants —

That one.

Outside the neon white club where the pretty boys and the dirty girls line up, he stands off to one side, leaning against a wall. His arms are folded, he’s watching them with a small delighted smile. Any guy will do but this guy will be perfect. Ordinary man in his ordinary blue jeans and blue shirt hanging open and loose over a thin white undershirt. Yeah, he’ll do just fine.

“Hi.”

Dark eyes, brown. Black hair tied back in a sleek ponytail. He looks at her and he likes what he sees. She with her long blonde hair and uptilted flirty eyes, her curves bound by a small top, and a short skirt showing off long bare legs. Her perfume is light and sharp.

“Hi.”

“Buy you a drink and a dance?”

And ha, he likes that too. She hasn’t lost it after all.

The night is hot and endless inside the club, all rich coloured lights and dark velvet corners, the smell and heat of young bodies radiating sex and energy, the music throbbing the patterned walls. It pours down over her like sunshine into her blood. Glorious, she turns a smile on him as she takes his hand. Tonight she is just a young girl looking for some fun and that deep bright smile back says he wants her.

She’ll have him.

At the bar, they both get a beer and she notices with a shock that he has huge hands, his fingers extremely long and slender, curling easily around the bottle. It makes her go hot all over.

“I’m Michael.”

_________________

 

The man goes very still. And now the boy looks at him. “I’ve been to ten. Ten funerals. Ten people I’ve known. And I’m only eighteen. What kind of average is that? What does it mean?”

“Some people are just luckier, I guess.” It’s a very dry joke and the boy reacts without heat. “Fuck you, man.”

“Sorry.”

“I just can’t help thinking. Does it make me a better person, stronger or something? Lots of people lose their parents at a young age. They’re all right. Lots of people lose their grandparents. They’re fine too. Sure, some people’s friends die in accidents. They move on. And Chloe … ”

He stops, looks away for a long moment.

“You’re fine, too. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

_________________

 

She grins. “I’m not telling you my name.”

He quirks a brow, surprised. “So what do I call you? Baby?”

“Not if you want that dance.”

Oh, this is so much fun. He laughs, watching her with all kinds of speculation. 

“So do you always not tell people your name?” He takes a drag off the beer and she has to try something for basic female vanity. Taking up her own bottle, she crosses one leg over the other, sliding the foot along her bare calf. And sure enough, there go his eyes, lingering and appreciative.

She grins. “Only the ones I drink and dance with. And maybe take home.”

He actually splutters a little. Laughing, she says “And now you think I’m a skank you wouldn’t take home to Mum, right?”

He’s recovering fast, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Let me guess,” he looks at her clearly, “that’s what you want me to think.”

Caught out, she blinks.

“The question is now,” he continues, “why would you want me to think that?”

“Because really I want someone to love me despite all my evil ways?” It’s a snappy comeback and one she’s quite proud of. And he gets the sarcasm, grins wide and lovely at her. “Oh you poor thing …”

She bursts out laughing, likes the way he laughs with her, brown eyes sparkling and unguarded. On an impulse, she puts down her drink and grabs his hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”

Under the coloured strobes, he is just that much taller to make her feel all the more feminine. The song is thumping strong and fast but he puts his hands on her waist, pulls her in gently enough that she could twist free if she wanted. A nice man, she thinks as they move on the melody and move slow. Maybe he really is a nice sweet decent man who loves his mother and loves kids. Yeah, right.

This delicious sense of getting to know each other is what she’s missed so much. Looking into a new man’s eyes and trying to read his soul there, communicating with wordless look and smile in the chaos of sound, warm on the memory of shared laughter and understanding, learning the smell and feel of someone else’s body, and wondering just how far is far enough. 

He smells of earth and green leaves, like spring and new life. It intoxicates her with possibility. And he’s hard all over, she feels muscle in the arm below her palm and in the thigh that brushes hers, senses it in the span of chest so close. It’s that strength of humanity and maleness that makes sudden want twist deep inside her, hungry and aching.

He doesn’t protest when she lifts her arms and curls them around his neck, curving herself to fit into him. But there is curiosity in the way he looks at her now, a sort of questioning. Oh why? Is she being too sluttish for his nice decent ways now? 

She leans back, mocking a little with a quirked eyebrow. And he laughs, getting it. In the loudness of bodies and melody, he bends to her ear, his breath a whisper soft. “Feel like some fresh air?”

_________________

 

The boy looks at him, long and silent. They look nothing alike. One is young and tanned with the grace and power of a dancer, his shaved head revealing a defined face with dark calm eyes and a kind mouth. The other is older with an entirely different sense of strength about him, his hair messy and short, curling around his ears and high on his nape. It falls across a strong brow, his eyes clear and steady, the mouth neat.

“How would you know? Shit like that doesn’t just leave, doesn’t just vanish overnight. They had to have a closed casket for Chloe. Did you know that? And I asked the officer later, I made him tell me. They don’t think it was just a burglar. He said whoever it was had taken their time about it, had — ” he stops then goes on, grim. “The way she was cut, it was mutilation, he said. Whoever it was had fun.”

_________________

 

They walk through the park, not speaking. The moon is rising, full and heavy in the dim sky. His hand is curled loosely around hers. And here comes the loneliness. In the silence of two people, two strangers only just met, it swells up and swamps her heart, chokes her throat. She stops suddenly and tries to breathe, eyes squeezed shut on tears.

“Hey.” His voice is soft, a murmur of humanity in the darkness. She opens her eyes just in time to see him lower his face to hers. “It’s all right,” he says just before his lips touch hers. And maybe now it feels like it could be. His hand is firm on her waist, the other sliding up the inward curve of her back to cup the back of her neck. He kisses her carefully, warm lips and easy breath, like a decent man brought up to respect women, a man who likes women. That thought makes her squirm close, push her body against his, open her mouth to him. He responds with instinctively tightening hands and ah the slick gorgeous hint of tongue. She moans, twisting closer, arms around his neck, and feels it when the want hits him hard, reels like silver light through her blood. He kisses her hard and she responds just as hard, clutching with hands and the maddening heat of mouth into mouth, mad with the ecstasy of what it is to be flesh, what it is to be human, what it is to be alive.

_________________

 

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah? Would it have happened if I hadn’t walked out, if I hadn’t left? I mean, yeah, okay, we argued. We broke up, she dumped me. Fine. So what?”

“Tell me how you were supposed to know. Nobody could have known.” He’s brutal but the boy doesn’t seem to hear. “She shouldn’t have been alone.”

“That wasn’t up to you.”

_________________

 

They fuck against the wall just inside her apartment, in the dark, in the silence broken only by half moans and rough breaths. Hard and fast, her bare legs wrapped around his hips, fingers digging into his upper arms, short skirt caught up at her waist. Still clothed, he holds her up, traps her against the wall, his face pressed between her bare neck and shoulder. The open metal of his belt buckle rasps, warms, hurts against the inside of her thigh. His cock goes deep, pushing her open wide and high, drives in once, twice, three times and it’s hard enough, brutal enough for her to convulse sharp around him, slammed with pleasure as he keeps going until it shudders through him.

That’s the first time. Collapsed in the shadows at the base of the wall, he finds her mouth soft and tells her he doesn’t normally do this. Too boneless to snark, she says “I know,” and takes him to her bed.

There, in the coral glow of a lamp, she undresses, loving the way he watches her, still hungry. Kneeling on the bed, she pushes the blue shirt off his shoulders and when it catches halfway down his arms, she bites his chest through the thin white undershirt. Muscle, hard and flat and sleek, flinches under her mouth. He catches her head with both hands, lifts her face back up to his. “Easy, easy …” he says, affectionate and tender. She doesn’t tell him this is something she doesn’t do.

 

// … his mouth like wine, christ the wrongbadhot of this … trying to stop, to stave this off but never could deny him anything …

Fight him off, break his hold. “This doesn’t happen!” Knowing I can intimidate him. He picks himself up from where he’s fallen against the wall, staggering a little. There’s blood on his lip. 

It’s mine.

“Yes, it fucking well does!” Blocks my path, furious eyes, anger like the sun. “You owe me. You owe me this.”

… and he wants, he wants so much, pulls at me with wicked sweet mouth and greedy hands, not gentle, not kind. He bites me, the little fucker, tears at my throat with his teeth and I have to pull him off, kiss punish that brazen mouth and let him feel the truth, the shock, the horror of this.

He grabs my face with both hands, licks into me, tasting teeth and tongue, focusing scarily, hungrily. It’s the desperation of delayed gratification, that insatiable lust for the object of obsession. I know this, known this too well but never from this side of the mirror … //

 

The second time is slow and exploring. In the reddish light, he learns all the shapes and lines of her body and she lets him, watches his delight and fascination. His hands are huge and inexpressibly beautiful around the curves of her bare breasts, his fingers incredibly slender skimming down between her thighs. She spreads her legs, watches as he bends his dark head. The touch of tongue makes her gasp and arch, that slow slick penetration and exploration so delicious. She melts against the pillows, all the nerves of her body singing heat. Her hands curl in the sheets, pleasure swamping from the core of her right out through vein and skin to the very tips of her fingers. He doesn’t wait, rises up and covers her with the whole length of his nude warmed body, watches her closely as he slides his cock in and she sighs again. The smell of sex, hers and his, rises thick, slick on their skin, wet rich earth and sodden greenery, lush rainforest, thick with life and decay. Even with her eyes closed, she feels the weight of his attention, knows he’s memorising every nuance, fully focused, immersed in her.

 

// … drags me down and now I’m clutching just as hard, drunk, dazed, disbelieving and furious in my own right, but fuck, fuuuuck, to be wanted by him. He knows it, knows it when I go rigid at his hand shoved up against my hard cock. Thin trousers between cockskin and hand but the heat makes me bite, warn his mouth, makes him growl back and push away.

Me on my knees, lips stinging and hot all over. Him on his feet, wrenching his jeans open. No underwear, just cock thick and hard and so so fucking wrong I could cry. I could kill.

Dark room, old Public Enemy poster slashed with passing car lights behind him. He stands there, automatically fisting cock. Looking at my face. Contemplating. Eyes I’ve never seen before.

That keeps me on my knees. He puts his other hand on my face, drags against the skin of my cheek down to jaw, pushing as the bone pushes back. Touches my mouth, salt and grime in the ridge of print, and he pushes his fingers in. Rough trade, he seeks teeth and I let him find them. That’s when he stumbles forward, a sound caught in his throat, and jesus cockflesh in my mouth, full hard, slickest tender so hot living sacrament.

Tears in my eyes, blood pounding in my ears. His hand, large and strong, locks on the back of my neck, holds me in place. And yes, yes, fuck you, yes … //

 

Shadows move behind the lit window across the street and they watch without expression when the light clicks off. A dog barks somewhere and someone else yells.

“I wonder if the same thing happened to Mum.”

The man closes his eyes, rubs his forehead with a hand. “You don’t have to — ”

“It could have, couldn’t it? Nobody told me. I was so young, no one would tell me anything. You were the only — ” he breaks off suddenly, eyes quick and bright. “Do you remember I used to be so scared when the sun went down? Do you remember what you told me?”

 

// … we’re gonna do this forever, he tells me. 

It feels like forever … a fucking age and a day, incinerating in the snarl and swathe of his skin golden brown and gorgeous. And god help me but I help, ripping cloth away until we’re

melded

nothing but sin on sin, born of each other, turned and turned again. 

He holds me down and I don’t know if I let him or just can’t fight any more. Nipples chewed, throat savaged, mercury burns crossed all over me, into me. He attacks … fists and feeds … feeds on my cock and oh god in heaven I am immolated, twisting to get away from the unbearable scald of his mouth but pulled back, held down … held down and fed on, too much given and too much taken … all I can see is black shadow and white light, stark awful divine, and me gasping like a dying child.

Chest to chest, and christ the tidal thump of his heart, the salt rush roar of heat so close under his thin lovely skin. He smells of old denim and hot blood, of decay and grace. His eyes searing mad as I spread my legs and he fucks into me, cock slow brutal and possessive. His his and this is the mirror crashing, cutting my chest wide open, heart exposed to his young strong hands. He will crush and I will come, one soul between us. When he comes it’s vicious, it’s like death. He holds too tight, kisses too sharp, he hurts when he makes love and that makes every kind of sense.

You and me, he says. Forever. Doesn’t ask, doesn’t beg, just tells like it’s fact, like it’s given I won’t protest. 

And the blank unholy truth of it is I just might … //

 

The third time, they talk. As the night deepens and the neon crawls across the wall, she undoes his hair and spreads it across his shoulders. It’s long and thick, defined black curls that loop around her finger and pull down as low as his nipple small and erect. Now she begins to really see him, appreciating the strong square delineated jaw, the sweet wide mouth, the column of firm throat, and the sleek contour of collarbone into shoulder. There’s an elegance and a beauty about him naked that makes her want to lay him back and explore.

He doesn’t seem to notice, slides the back of his fingers between her breasts as he lies beside her, tracing around the edges of the little silver pendant she always wears. She props herself up and makes him lie back, says “I want to look at you.” He grins slow, links his hands beneath his head. “All yours.”

And oh, he is beautiful. Long and lean and pale all over, elegant from the inward arch of his bare foot to the tight corded muscle of thigh and the flat hard abdomen. Nude, she touches one fingertip to the edge of where dark hair curls against pale skin far below his navel. His cock stiffens and she watches as it grows long and slender and hard, flushed dark with blood. When she looks up, his eyes are closed, lashes dark and flickering slightly.

An ordinary man and she wants suddenly to tell him. “Do you want to know why I went out tonight?”

The brown eyes fix on her, clear and intelligent. She tells him and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Knew you weren’t a skank.”

“But I could be,” she insists, making him laugh. “Okay, okay.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely?” she asks, feeling exposed now.

His eyes flicker and he stays silent for a while. When he does speak, it’s with a disarming honesty. “How can I? The world is an amazing place. The way people are, the way they think, the myriad ways they react, how they believe, believe with all their heart. The world’s so full of life, constantly moving and thinking and loving and hating and creating.”

He sits up. Those eyes are steady, now the kindness there threatens to undo her. “You’re never alone …”

He holds out his hand and she takes it without thinking, just needing to feel, needing to bury herself in him. He lets her crowd in, holds her close, all the strength and warmth of him like some incredible unasked gift.

Suddenly she knows what she can give him back. Lifting her head, she waits until he meets her eyes, quizzical. There’s a groove that appears beside his mouth when he smiles, cutting down from his cheek to the strong line of his jaw, and she puts her fingertip where it will start. And she says “My name is Hannah.”

There it appears and she traces it, smiles back, brilliant with happiness. “Hannah,” he says clearly. He has a lovely voice, she decides, warm and strong and just deep enough to shiver her with richness.

“Hannah,” he repeats, eyes mischievous, “I would like to make love to you now.”

She laughs, delighted. “Okay.”

She shouldn’t think about forever. It’s a dangerous terrible thought but oh god, what if, what if? Straddling his thighs, she lowers herself onto him, caught by the intensity of his expression. Her flesh closes around him and she thinks it could be like this always. If she would only ask, give him the choice, open herself that one last way to him.

He steadies her with his hands on her hips, guiding the rhythm. His mouth is bitten red, she could have him forever, do this forever. Her arms tightening around his neck, Hannah bears down, clenches around his cock, sees him lift his face up to her. The cords in his throat strain, sweat slipping on his skin. She tangles her hands in the long curls of his hair and feels him sweep one strong hand up her back to her nape.

He understands her, he understood her immediately like nobody else had. They had laughed together, they fucked together, they made love. And that intensity of delight, of fascination, the way he looks at her is so so much like —

The crack is obscenely loud. She hears it before she feels it and then what she feels is a sudden awful stop to all sensation below her neck. She stares in rigid shock at his brown eyes sparkling alive. His hand is still supporting her neck, cradles her head as he moves her ever so gently, laying her down against the pillows. His cock is still inside her, she knows this without actually feeling it.

“We could be so good together, Hannah,” he tells her, stroking her hair away from her face. “You know that, don’t you? I could make you so happy, I do make you happy. You and me against the world, healing your broken heart, restoring your faith in humanity, mending your shattered soul.”

He smiles at her, that deep bright beautiful smile that is like sunshine. “By the way, I’ve snapped your neck. I think you get about five seconds before death. Long, isn’t it?”

He bends his head. The pain is then blinding, the image in her head even worse, the sheer impossibility of it. And there’s her blood so wrong red on his sweet mouth when he lifts his head and grins down at her. “If it helps,” he says, “you were just great.”

The last thing she sees are his eyes, intense and interested and excited. 

Her last thought is of Rory.

_________________

 

The man looks at him, startled by memory. “I said — ”

“You said twilight is a time for mending, a time when all things are made whole again, when everything changes and is beautiful. Remember?”

“Yeah,” the man says, flustered now. The boy nods, determined. “I was never scared again. You taught me that, how not to be scared of the dark.”

The man smiles slow, careful, sensing unease.

“Chloe was raped. Before. And after. Pre and post-mortem, the officer said.”

“Jesus!” The man turns away, gets off the parapet, then swings back, furious suddenly. “So what are you going to do? You want some black leather and a utility belt, go after the monster and slay him like some goddamned hero? Is that what you want? Fucking think!”

_________________

 

The world is an amazing place. Look at them, the way they move, the way they talk to each other and struggle to give and receive. How can you not be fascinated, not love this world and all its people? The way a mother automatically holds her son back from the curb, the way a father cradles his daughter against his shoulder, the laugh of a child as the sun goes down. It’s life, turning and changing and creating each moment anew. It’s life, unthinking and living for the sheer joy and momentum.

Occasionally there are these orgies in the old quarters. Lots of lace and leather and satin and lipstick that come off to all cold contours and ripping teeth and bloodless posturing. Boring!

Throw a few humans into the mix and fuck me but the place comes alive. It becomes all kinds of fabulous, that insatiable furnace of living skin and blood that roars and rushes through moan and pore, the chaotic rageful needing mess of human souls striving to get that much closer, to get into the skins and hearts of each other. 

I fucking love those nights! Sure, the walls get a bit spattered and sometimes you have to remember to get somewhere safe before the stupor hits and you spend days slumped in ecstasy only to wake up on fire. But those nights … good times.

Of bodies turning around and against me, human skin all sleek and warm, to watch the muscle and sinew of a flawed body arching in love or death. The way they move, unconscious of their own decaying grace, and then occasionally that perfect one who knows just how beautiful she is because she is flawed and will die and still she dances.

Humans are beautiful because they’re so breakable and they know it but spend so much time pretending they’re not. Their breakable bodies are also the bodies electric, vibrating with that eternal note of disharmony, natural impulses clashing with all the cacophony of morals and strangulated intellects.

But in that moment of orgasm, the heartbeat of the world rushes into every cell, swelling and shrinking, pulsing with the anima mundi, at one with the sacred and the profane. It’s all connected and I can’t help but love it, love their bodies and the sweetness of their so breakable souls.

_________________

 

“I know.”

The man stops. “What?”

The boy bends his head, undoing the ribbon on the little present. It’s a small jewellery box that opens to reveal a small silver cross. He looks at it for a long silent moment then looks back up at the very still man. His face is calm.

“Michael. I know.”

_________________

 

Take these two. Old black woman and her little tyke of a grandson with hair springing out in corkscrews of brown. It’s late evening and they’re trudging home, passing from streetlight to streetlight. There are sirens in the distance, knives in the alleys and guns in the cars thumping music as they pass. But she’s telling him a story about a mother watching her child die on a cross and he’s listening, holding onto her hand as he walks around the cracks in the pavement. Neither notice when I fall in behind them, just an ordinary man on his way home.

She’s lived a long hard life and her faith is what keeps her going, keeps her looking after the ones who can’t look after themselves. She’s telling him about love because she believes it implicitly. That quality of belief is like sweet wine to me. People believe so hard it leaves no room for doubt and so they move through their little lives, bandaging their brittle hearts, thinking they’re secure in their little pearly bubbles of faith. And this little boy, he’s learning the same thing.

I follow them home and watch as they climb the steps, disappear into their old brick apartment. Upstairs, she helps him change into his pajamas and tells him to say his prayers. I watch from the fire escape, charmed. There’s nothing like innocence, that particular solemn concentration of a five year old boy who hasn’t yet learnt to protect himself from the hard men and the cruel women of the world.

He turns out his lamp to the sounds of soul from the living room. A strip of light still shows under his door and ah, look at the precious little fella turning on his side to watch it. The window is open, streetlight glaring in, and I’m in the shadow but he hears it clearly.

My fingertips tap out a rhythm on the glass. He turns, peering over. That’s when I step out of the shadow, seat myself on the sill, and keep going with the rhythm. It’s a tune I heard from a place down in New Orleans, dark and delicious, as usual something about the devil. The words come back to me and that’s when he gets out of bed.

Little boy with his corkscrew curls and huge eyes in his pajamas patterned all over with little cars. He’s more alarmed than scared but he comes over anyway. As the streetlight shines on his round face, I duck my head and smile.

“Hi, Rory.”

_________________

 

“How?” he asks eventually. They’re sitting side by side on the parapet once more, several inches of air between them. “The, uh, cross?”

Rory looks down at his mother’s pendant and then lifts it out, clasps it carefully around his neck. The silver shape fits in the dip of his collarbone, catches the refracted city light. His expression is still preternaturally calm as he looks over.

“You smelt of her. That first night, the night we met, you smelt of her perfume.”

Michael grimaces involuntarily. “Yeah, well. Stupid undead flesh.”

It’s not funny but Rory finds himself wanting to smile. They sit together in silence, thirteen years of shared rooftop nights spooling away between them. Rory thinks of all the people he’s lost over the years, the young mother he doesn’t quite remember and Grams and the more distant of his friends. Chloe in her closed casket.

“You’re all I have left.”

Michael says nothing. The city light makes him look forbidding, draws bone shadows into the rough stone of his face. It’s a cold night and Rory’s in a warm hoodie and jeans. But the man with him wears only a thin white undershirt, deeply cut over sleek vulnerable chest, and black trousers. His lean muscled arms are braced bare on the parapet and the short black curls on his forehead stir with the breeze, make him look all too human.

“That’s what you wanted, right?” 

And now he gets a sharp intimidating look that takes him right back to five years old in his footie pajamas with his hair like a goddamned sunflower.

“She broke your heart,” Michael says coldly, “you told me yourself, you were in so much pain.”

And it makes an awful sort of sense. This is more horrifying than actual confirmation. Faintly, Rory says “You enjoyed it …”

The coldness snaps off into pure exasperation. “Vampire, hello!”

Rory laughs before he can help himself. “Oh god,” he breaks off with a moan, sending a thousand mute apologies to his dead. Michael watches him with a familiar sort of fondness, a groove appearing by his mouth down to his jaw. “You’re a damned fool, boy. Yes, I killed people. So fucking what?”

“People I loved.”

“People who hurt you. People you didn’t need.”

“I didn’t need my mother?” he snaps back.

“Your mother who was out whoring while you were at home.”

Rory catches his breath, the silver cold against bone. “She told me, you know,” Michael continues, “said that’s why she went out that night, she needed to get away from all her responsibilities, from her little son, just for one night.”

“And you killed her for it. Some saint you are.”

He shrugs. “If the halo fits, man.”

But it does hurt. And he finds his thoughts circling around, circling back to the vampire sitting beside him, smelling like cool nights and green shadows, the man who had been there, someone in the dark for thirteen years. 

“And you can’t blame me for your ever loving grandmother.” Michael scowls, disgruntled. “Well, you can’t. Woman practically doused herself in holy water. I couldn’t get anywhere near her. Not that I wanted to,” he adds hastily. “I had no problem with her.”

“Yeah,” Rory says with slow dawning wonder, “she liked you. What the fuck?”

Michael grins, sunny once more. “All women like me. It’s a gift. I told you, you just have to treat them with respect and really love them.”

“Before or after you rip their throats out?”

He’s unruffled. “Some women like that.”

And now Rory’s curiosity gets the better of him. “What were you like? As a human, I mean? Do you remember?”

The familiar eyes go guarded, a slyness to the way he looks past to the city rising sharp and dark against the sky. But his voice is quiet, reflective when he answers. “I was a sweetheart, a pushover. Nicest guy you ever met, heart of gold and all that. I loved everyone and everyone fucked me over.”

“Oh.” And clearly this is the way he prefers it. “So you don’t … miss it? Being human? Ever?”

The eyes are cool now. “That would defeat the purpose now, wouldn’t it? Regret, remorse, nostalgia. Human emotions. Human sentiment.”

Rory frowns. “But you haven’t killed me.”

“I haven’t killed a lot of people,” comes the mild answer. 

It’s not reassuring. But Rory has to push it, has to hear it. “Have, have you regretted any?”

He gets that piercing intelligent look. “What did I say?”

“No regret, right. But did you?” He’s not pleading, he’s really not. But there has to be something, some small window of opportunity, some glimmer of dawn light.

Michael looks at him long and steady, the shapes and contours of his face imperfectly human in the neon silver city. When he speaks, it’s clear and precise. “No. Death is part of life. You live, you celebrate, you dance, you love, you come, you die. The more alive you are, the closer you come to death. And it’s beautiful. It’s harmony. So no. Not one.”

It shouldn’t hurt so much but it does. “Okay,” he mumbles, looking away. The night sky is changing, the deep blues shading towards grey far between the buildings. And unthinkingly, Rory says “Dawn’s a sort of twilight, too.”

There’s no reply. For a long while, they sit together, watching the colours change. Everything smells sharper, colder, somehow green and darker. Eventually Michael speaks, his voice steady. “For what it’s worth, I did … I do love you, you know.”

Rory smiles, a little sad. “I know.”

He turns, feels like a dream moves over him, recreating, life anew, and kisses the vampire Michael on his soft shocked red mouth. It’s a fierce startling kiss, nothing but lips and breath, with the smell of hot metal against flesh, and the shock of change.

Twilight mends.

The dawn breaks.  
__________________  
__________________

 

_He, himself, is the monstrous creature which lives in the depths. From its mask it looks out at man and sends him reeling with the ambiguity of nearness and remoteness, of life and death in one. … He is the mad ecstasy which hovers over every conception and birth and whose wildness is always ready to move on to destruction and death. He is life which, when it overflows, grows mad and in its profoundest passion is intimately associated with death._

_The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment --- the enchanted moment when something new is created --- when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy. The rapture and terror of life are so profound because they are intoxicated with death._

Otto, translated by Palmer, Dionysus: Myth And Cult.

**Author's Note:**

> Summary quote is from Break Of Dawn by Michael Jackson, off Invincible.  
> time of the turning is from the song by Peter Gabriel, off Ovo.  
> The basic female vanity moment is yes, totally a Basic Instinct image, only not so wide.  
> mouth like wine is, ha, from Four Women by Nina Simone.  
> The blank unholy is from The Philadelphia Story, play by Philip Barry.  
> skins and hearts is taken from the title of the first album by The Church.  
> the bodies electric is totally Raymond Bradbury even though I haven't actually read the collection.  
> "Vampire, hello!" I either got from Buffy or paraphrased from Pirates Of The Caribbean, it's really anyone's choice.  
> Someone in the dark from the song off the special edition of Thriller, originally recorded for E.T.  
> silver city is from Murder Mysteries, Neil Gaiman.
> 
> Originally posted at http://aquandrian.livejournal.com/566759.html


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